https://www.google.com/patents/US9370164
This basically grants them a patent on every single cannabis plant which has >3% THC and CBD, and which Myrcene is not the dominant terpine. Can anyone who knows their bud say which strains this could be applied to?
Also, the specification on this is HUGE. This represents a large investment; they're going to filing continuations on this until the cows come home.
EDIT: I found this website: http://analytical360.com/
This lists a number of strains that could potentially read on this, such as Gorilla Glue: http://analytical360.com/m/archived/261533
Cannabis has been cultivated and sold illegally in the US for almost a century. It seems unlikely that the USPTO would be able to enforce compliance when law enforcement has not.
And that is going to make it much easier to regulate. Patents have the potential to pick the winners in this industry if they are handed out irresponsibily.
The free market was so called because it is free from control of its participants :)
Edit: To be clear, I'm arguing against capitalism as a manifestation of freedom, I'm sure we both agree that patents and copyrights should not exist in a free society, though.
You may think the above two reasons apply to both patents and copyrights but I will argue they don't once someone asks me for it :)
Oh, are we just being hyperbolic? A capitalist would say a socialist is wrong and this is cronyism. A socialist would say capitalism is wrong and this is cronyism.
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2108347/green...
Article states that more than half of the 600 patents related to cannabis are held in China. Unclear if they relate to industrial hemp or medicinal uses.
The race to get coveted FDA approval is even more heated. If GW Pharmaceuticals' stock price is any indication, it may be first out the gate with its CBD-based epilepsy treatment, Epidiolex.
A powerful drug derived from marijuana is on the cusp of federal approval
http://www.businessinsider.com/marijuana-epilepsy-drug-2017-...
Looks like BioTech Institute LLC (and I'm sure lots of others) are trying to address the second point.
That has not stopped the monetization of alcohol...
People who want to make billions from this will simply lobby until there are extremely strict laws in place to protect their profits, and then also lobby to make sure there are wars and extremely strict punishments for violators of those laws.
How much of a natural product is it safe to say is patentable? And how much of the patent has to depend on things like "processes of manufacturing", etc?
The right to grow needs yo be solidified.
For the end result it also doesn't really matter how the fight will go. Either 1, 2 or 3 of them will find a balance that all of them can live with and the rest of the market will just die, starting from the smaller participants, either by going bankrupt or by merging with bigger players. Soon everything will become legal and you can buy standardized packages in the super market with a few illegal players continuing to gamble against the law but never really making big bucks out of it.
I love good journalism like this. Well written, informative, and interesting.
Thanks for sharing!
You get the temperature control on your distillation wrong by 3 degrees, people will get sick from drinking it. 5 degrees, and it may kill kids who happen to get a hold of it, and starting at about 8 degrees it gets to the point where 2-3 glasses of your homebrew whiskey will kill a full blown adult.
Drink it, you'll be fine!
Since other people are comparing rudimentary horticulture to consumable alcohol production for some reason, making market grade alcohol is not nearly as simple. Aside from maybe some parts of West Virginia, basement hooch is not in high demand.
Personally, I would rather grow it at home exactly like tomatoes, if it's herb.
Most of the action these days is in extracts and fine products for connoisseurs. Don't underestimate the semi-luxury market - the same demographic who support microbreweries and small coffee roasters like cannabis. While there will be giant mass market Wal-Weed, and also large plantations like the wine complex of Napa, there will also be a lot, lot of small growers, extractors and breeders.
What I'd like to do is to create something about refrigerator-sized which would use hydroponics to get cannabis growing as close to being a push-button operation as possible. I built a prototype a few years ago that was at least able to provide the entertainment of being able to control the lights/fans/pumps via cron job, but life hasn't worked out to be able to do that again. I do think there's a market for such things for pretty much the reasons you identify.
Secondly, I think the analogy was more about the enthusiasm a home gardener has, where tomatoes are often something they would grow. So the poster above meant that they'd rather cannabis to be regulated in the same way tomatoes are: you can grow them without regulation at your house, but if you want to sell them commercially (to stores and restaurants) then further licensing is required.
The seeds in your crop only happen if you have male plants, or a problem with hermaphrodites. Most people cull the males or use female clones. If you have a female plant, it only produces female flowers. Triggering flowering is quite simple as it only requires manipulation of photoperiod.
Growing cannabis is really not that complicated… mot only has hemp been domesticated for thousands of years, but herbal varieties have been bred like heck for decades to be easier to grow and productive especially grown indoors. Fertilizer wise, it is a lot like tomatoes, loving rich soil, drainage and nitrogen, and then switching to a bloom cycle. Overall it's a very hearty and resilient plant (weed?). It's true that doing it well takes time, money, facilities and skill, and ideally passion.
For the small, self-contained unit you described, it soubds like what people call a cabinet grow. I think there's a subreddit for that. The subterfuge aspect is less important these days, now that more people live in states where it is legal, but some still do cabinet grows for space or privacy reasons. The automatic aspect is a great idea... definitely there are vast opportunities in helping people grow their own healthy herbs.
I don't see illegal marijuana going away. There's always going to a black market for a product that's strictly regulated, so long as it's profitable and in high demand.
I have nothing against free trade, I am opposed to the idea that capitalism promotes a 'free' society. Although there are market Socialists, I am not one of them, because I do no think that it goes far enough to eliminate the law of Value which stands in the way of emancipation of the labourer from capital.
Guess the european nations are going to simply need a new word in order to stop being conflated with North Korea, and former european nations
and gets run out by other Americans in all levels of society that imagine North Korea because of the word alone
branding problem. if you are talking about one thing and the other people don't understand, then the language isn't working.
It's more of an issue in former warsaw pact countries who overthrew a "socialist" government in the late 80s however. I know among my group of friends I'd get eye-rolls and chuckles if I described myself as a socialist
How successful their efforts have been is up to the individual to judge.
You are right that it's not as much of a dirty word here.
> but herbal varieties have been bred like heck for decades to be easier to grow and productive especially grown indoors.
This is probably what I would consider to be one of the key differences. Because of prohibition, there was a great deal of what we might almost call scientific research into maximizing yields. A tomato is pretty much a tomato any way you slice it, but the hemp growing on the roadside and the product of the expert grower are hardly recognizable as being from the same plant. I don't think humans have quite the same relationship with very many other crops.
I think the main appeal of an automated grow cabinet would be that it's relatively difficult to keep temp/humidity/CO2 at ideal levels without a fair amount of investment in HVAC. Monitoring TDS and pH is almost too easy not to do, and being able to adjust those automatically is probably trickier than it sounds, but tractable. Setting up truly ideal conditions for cannabis cultivation requires a lot of planning, and dedicated space. But as you say, this isn't very different from the home/small batch brewing scene, and there should be a similar market for equipment.
By this time, there should probably be a package targeted for Raspberry Pis, and the ability for your cannabis plant to text you via Signal if she wants some attention.
I think it's great that you posted about your ideas about it, because there are huge opportunities related to everything about cannabis that most people will overlook due to the various issues from the past still surrounding it.